Majority of L.A. Conferences Will Go Ahead as Scheduled

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Despite the tragic events of Sept. 11 and the difficulties in air travel, most businesses and associations are moving forward with their scheduled events and conferences in Los Angeles.

“I think there are a lot of companies out there that are saying life has to go on and we have to have our meetings to be viable in the marketplace,” said Steve Haller, director of sales and marketing at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

Perhaps more important, event planners are bound by contracts with hotels and the Los Angeles Convention Center that make it expensive to cancel events. While many hotels have been lenient in the first few weeks after the attacks, they are now enforcing contract rules.

“There are a lot of penalties if people pull out right now. There are financial decisions,” he said.

Haller said last week that room bookings at the Millennium Biltmore were still down about 25 percent, but he attributed that to individual business travelers and others, not conference group travelers. In fact, the National Alliance of Black School Educators has not altered its hotel bookings for a meeting in Los Angeles in early November, Haller said.


Local events still on

Many of the larger events coming up at the Convention Center are local organizations, like the Los Angeles Black Business Association, which opens the week of Sept. 24. But even events that include out-of-towners have not changed plans.

Carol Martinez, associate vice president of the L.A. Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the Online Learning Conference and Exposition scheduled for Sept. 30 through Oct. 4 is still on. So is Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference 2001, set for Oct. 21-26.

Haller said the executives at Microsoft were concerned about bringing in 20 percent fewer attendees than the normal 4,000 or so, but it still didn’t want to cancel out.

The Convention Center did receive two cancellations that were scheduled soon after Sept. 11: The Personal Communications Industry Association’s 3-day annual trade show and Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc.’s annual dealership conference, which was scheduled to open Sept. 22.

But the venue has not received any further cancellations, said General Manager George Rakis.

“We have those events coming up, but at this point we haven’t received any indication they were going to change plans,” Rakis said. “Whatever damage has been done has been done.”

And some damage was done. Rakis said the two cancellations amounted to a loss of $1.2 million in electrical, telecommunications and food services provided by the Convention Center. Martinez said the Toyota event alone, which was to bring in 5,000 dealers, resulted in an overall economic loss to the city of $2.5 million.


Some are rescheduling

Toyota determined that air travel difficulties would keep many attendees from getting to Los Angeles, according to spokeswoman Tracy Underwood. Underwood couldn’t say how much the company lost from the event, or whether it pays for dealers attendance and hotel costs, but she did say the company expects to organize a number of regional meetings to distribute information to suppliers before the new models roll out.

Others who were forced to cancel are quickly re-scheduling.

“We wanted to go far enough out from the tragedy so people had time to re-schedule,” said Christyne Buteyn, executive director for the Association for Corporate Growth’s L.A. chapter, which had a Sept. 12 Middle Market Conference at the Beverly Hills Hotel featuring CNN broadcaster Larry King. “We could have done it much sooner, but we thought, ‘Let’s just take a breather.'”

The event, now scheduled for Oct. 24, only had 20 requests for refunds out of 730 registered attendees. Most of the speakers remain the same, she said, but she wouldn’t elaborate on who is attending.

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